During July the number of passengers passing through the terminal building at Corvera was 145,764, representing a “loss” of 17,638 travellers (or 10.8 per cent) compared to the same month last year at San Javier. The cumulative total for 2019 now stands at 654,548 (including the first fortnight when flights were still taking off and landing at San Javier), as many as 85,446 lower than at the same point of last year.

The data also show that this June there were 989 flights at Corvera as opposed to 1,118 at San Javier last July, a decrease of 11.5 per cent.

To add to the disappointment, the figures for the Murcia airport come in the context of a nationwide increase of a 3.4 per cent at all of the airports managed by Aena in Spain. This brought the overall passenger total up to 29.1 million during the month, with increases reported at almost all of the country’s busiest airports including Alicante-Elche, where a rise of 7.7 per cent took the total up to 1,721,537, the highest monthly total ever at the infrastructure in El Altet.

One aspect of the July data at Corvera which did not change was the dominance of flights between the Costa Cálida and the UK and Ireland on the arrivals and departures boards. Passengers on UK-Murcia flights accounted for 75 per cent of the overall total, with the bulk of the rest travelling on the services to and from Dublin (7.8 per cent), Norway (7 per cent), Belgium (3.1 per cent) and domestic flights within Spain (4.4 per cent). The only other meaningful contributions were the flights to and from Poland and the Czech Republic, with 1.3 per cent each, and as has been the case throughout this year the absence of airports in the Netherlands and Germany from the arrivals and departures boards at Corvera is particularly noticeable.

At this point last year each of these countries was contributing just under 2 per cent of the total, and while one of the aims of the Region of Murcia tourism authorities is to diversify in terms of encouraging visitors from more countries, at the airport the dominance of the British Isles is as pronounced as it has been for many years.